Sums of regular selfadjoint operators in Hilbert-C*-modules

Abstract: We introduce a notion of weak anticommutativity for a pair (S,T) of self-adjoint regular operators in a Hilbert-C*-module E. We prove that the sum $S+T$ of such pairs is self-adjoint and regular on the intersection of their domains. A similar result then holds for the sum S^2+T^2 of the squares. We show that our definition is closely related to the Connes-Skandalis positivity criterion in $KK$-theory. As such we weaken a sufficient condition of Kucerovsky for representing the Kasparov product. Our proofs indicate that our conditions are close to optimal.